Previous observations in riprarian habitats of Kings Creek, Konza Prairie Research Natural Area, Kansas indicated that emerging aquatic insects represent a concentrated source of food for insectivorous birds, particularly the flycatcher and gleaner guilds. This hypothesis was tested by concurrent measurments of net insect emergence (total emergence minus adults returning to the stream) and densities of birds at six sampling sites from June to August 1987 and May to June 1988. Significant positive correlations with emergence were found for flycatchers (r=0.93) and gleaners (r=0.91), the two insectivore guilds containing the majority of individuals along Kings Creek. Observations also showed that flycatcher and gleaner populations rapidly respond to temporal changes in insect emergence. Key words: fly catcher, gleaner, bird, aquatic insect, tallgrass prairie, stream, Kansas

The trophic structure of stream macroinvertebrate communities is described for gallery forest and grassland reaches of Kings Creek, Konza Prairie Research Natural Area. Similarities between communities in both riparian zones included a dominance by small, rapid-growing collectors (38% and 58% of total biomass in the gallery forest and grassland reaches, respectively) and nearly equal percentages for scrapers and predators. The main difference was a greater percentage of shredders in the gallery forest (22%) compared to the grassland (1%), and this difference is correlated with higher allochthonous inputs and storage of detritus in gallery forest channels. The trophic structure of gallery forest reaches is very similar to other forested streams, although this resemblance may be because of the unusually stable streamflows that occurred during the study period. Grassland reaches of Kings Creek more closely resemble desert and other prairie streams where low allochthonous inputs and hydrologic extremes (drought and flooding) limit shredder abundance